


Break even

by jspringsteen



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Gen or Pre-Slash, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-26 23:09:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5024209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jspringsteen/pseuds/jspringsteen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snafu remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Break even

Years later, he still thought about how everything had seemed to pivot on that moment - the few seconds that had halted him in the aisle of the train, the whirlwind of thoughts that laid waste in his mind. Moments before, he had slung his bag over his shoulder, turned away from the baggage rack and looked down on Eugene Sledge, sleeping peacefully in his seat. Snafu thought that this might have been the first time he had seen Sledge's face so serene and free from creases; there were no undisturbed nights to be had where they had been. Perhaps it was this - Snafu's eyes roamed Sledge's face, his body, his rusty hair (the shock of seeing Sledge not covered in dirt, without his helmet, without a worry on his mind) - that cemented Snafu's decision. Sledge would not miss him. It wasn't until they were laughing on the train together, with Burgie asking Sledge if he had a girl back home and Sledge replied in the negative that Snafu, cigarette dangling from his fingers, locked eyes with Sledge, and asked him did he think it was gonna last, that Snafu felt a glimmer of hope in his chest, like the sputtering flame of a nearly empty cigarette lighter - the hope of posterity. He had asked it casually - "How long do you think that's gonna last?" - but he'd hoped for… well, he didn't quite know. Had Sledge regaled them with tales of his girl back home, a beauty for the ages, or tempted them with the promise of a job offer that would settle him for life, Snafu would have backed down. Sledge would have had a happy destiny set before him, and Snafu would not have interfered, would have let him be. But the doubt in his voice, and the long looks they exchanged for the duration of the train journey, awakened something in Snafu that he had not felt before in his whole life. It was the merest whisper, like the puff of steam the train sighed out when it stopped at the station. "Come with me."  
     Snafu realised how much he had come to rely on Sledge; he had brought something to the war besides killing Japs, humidity, mud, thirst, and the stench of the dead. He couldn't exactly call it friendship; the war had thrown them together and Snafu had held on for dear life, but Sledge had never made an effort to hide his contempt for him. Still, Sledge intrigued him - the good Christian, the mama's boy, the fresh-faced youth gangly in his army uniform haunted Snafu's dreams until he began to inch his way into Sledge's company, trundling after him and then next to him, as they made their way to wherever the darts on the map in Eisenhower's office bade them. He could see Sledge was desperately trying to hold on to his morality, tried hard to wipe his blood-spattered conscious clean each night before he went to sleep, when Snafu would hear him mutter prayers to the star-studded night sky. And Snafu was there the exact moment Sledge's morality snapped in half, just as easily as one snaps a collarbone. When Sledge took out his knife and made to cut out the Japanese soldier's gold teeth, Snafu couldn't bear to see this perversion of Eugene Sledge's mind, the hopelessness he read in his eyes. "How come you're allowed to do it and I'm not?" Snafu had no reply. He had felt the same way about that Japanese soldier as he did about the rats that scuttled through his kitchen at home, bold little bastards that stole his food and bit his nose when he fell asleep on the couch. But it was Sledge, and his other fellow Marines, who began to crack under the inhuman circumstances they were fighting under that shattered Snafu's shell. He could not bear to see the hatred in Sledge's eyes, which had no place there.  
     He wondered if Eugene had ever prayed for him.  
     He could see the crack in Sledge's soul that would never be mended. It wasn't until they were on the train and they locked eyes that Snafu thought, they will never understand him. They will never believe that God allows men to do this to one another. But I do. I believe in the God of war.  
     "Come with me."  
     But the words never made it past his lips. And so he stood there, gazing upon Sledge's peaceful face, and slowly turned away. He shuffled down the aisle, his mind racing - "Wake him up. Tell him how you feel. 'What about you, Sledgehammer?' Ask him to stay. Stay." But it was the serenity that did it - that convinced Snafu that there was no way that he was on Sledge's mind, that he had ever been on Sledge's mind.  
     And so he got off the train.  
     He resisted the urge to look back, shouldered his bag and walked towards the exit, the sweltering Louisiana heat clinging to him like mud.

     That moment never unstuck from his thoughts.  
     One day, years later, he passed by a bookshop and his eye was caught by a title in the window. "With the Old Breed at Okinawa and Peleliu - By Eugene Sledge', it read. Snafu went inside and leafed through a copy, searching for his own name; he expected to find it as a footnote, but instead saw it swarmed over the pages. He stopped reading, bought the book, went home and told Gladys he had a headache; then he locked himself in his bedroom and read.  
     And Snafu wept.

     He was not merely mentioned in the book; he was woven through it. Sledge described him as a loyal trenchmate, someone who had seen enough horror to be dead inside, but who had retained just enough innocence to want to protect Sledge's. It was a gruesome account of the fighting they had seen together, and Snafu frowned at parts of it; it seemed there was a lot he had forgotten, or blocked out. But he could never forget the racing of his heart as he loaded his mortar, Sledge's bewildered gaze as the trees and the rocks exploded around them, the pure fear that injected his heart; and the same fear that made his blood pound in his ears as he stepped off the train, leaving Sledge behind without a goodbye.  
     Snafu flipped to the front of the book, picked up the phone and dialed the publisher's number. He wrote Sledge's phone number on his hand in blue biro, thanked the woman on the other line, and hung up. He stared at the number on his hand for the longest time, then dialed it, and felt his heartbeat gallopping in his chest.  
    "Hello?"  
     Deeper, but with the same Alabamian lilt. Sledge's voice. Snafu swallowed back a lump in his throat and wiped his eyes, surprised at the tears that had sprung up there so suddenly. He opened his mouth, suddenly afraid that his voice had died and he would never be able to speak to Sledge again.  
    "Hello?" Sledge repeated, and Snafu gripped the phone tighter.  
    "Hi, Sledgehammer."


End file.
